How to play Forty Thieves solitaire
Forty Thieves, also called Napoleon at St Helena, is a two-deck game with all forty column cards face up and very little room to manoeuvre.
Setting up
Two decks, 104 cards. Ten columns of four cards, all face up: the forty thieves. The other 64 cards are the stock. Eight foundations are built from ace to king in suit.
How to play
Build the columns down in suit: the 6 of clubs on the 7 of clubs.
Only one card moves at a time. To save effort the site moves a run in one go when empty columns would let you shift it card by card (twice as many cards for each empty column).
An empty column takes any card.
Tap the stock to turn one card onto the waste. Its top card can be played to a column or a foundation. You only go through the stock once.
Winning
All 104 cards on the foundations.
Tips
Empty columns are everything in this game. Don't fill one with a single card unless it frees something important. Play to the foundations steadily but keep low cards available to build on when the stock offers them.
Questions
Why is Forty Thieves so hard?
One pass through the stock, building only in suit and single-card moves leave few choices, so only a minority of deals can be won. Checking a deal takes the solver too long, so deals here are marked "not checked".